"A Cinderella Story” somehow offered me a nice smile on my lips and a little smirk. But in the end it made me realize that I may be a teenage on-line, but Sam would definitely not the kind of Cinderella I wanted to be! Armela O. Gertos Movie Review

PROPS FOR II Rowena Rose M. Lee

Except for unimaginative title, II is a boss album that is very pop rock and very Savage-Garden-meets-Hootie-And-The-Blowfish. THE CALLING’S second album has a lot of bass downpour and is a percussion spanking collection of songs that range from social commentaries to the ol’ lovey-dovey tunes. It deserves to be played at full volume anywhere, even and especially if your septuagenarian grandmother is house visiting. II is a musical performance that robs anyone the volition to disengage from the head bobbing experience. Of course, THE CALLING isn’t complete without Alex Max Band’s rich but rough orgasm-inducing baritone.

The conception of II sees the departure of all but Alex Band and Aaron Kamin. 23-year-old Band and 27-year-old Aaron Kamin stress in a press release dated April 1, 2004 that II is a reference to the “band having two principals” (MTV News). This is in response to a lawsuit that former THE CALLING member Billy Mohler and Nate Wood filed last year.

Kamin’s musical genius is felt throughout the entire album. For II, he plays acoustic, lead and bass guitars. He plays the organ and the piano. He plays the percussions. He also mixes and pre-programs almost half of the songs in II. He even does a cameo in track 11 Your Hope. His speaking voice announces in the background “There’s so many things we just don’t know about,” and “I think we all know what its like to feel alone.”

II is also markedly different from the string and drum work on CAMINO PALMERO, THE CALLING’S first album (2001). II’s synthesizers and computer mix are liver thumping that moves consciously on the path of the (now disbanded) Australian-based band Savage Garden.

Last August, THE CALLING released its second single. 

Band croons amidst the plucking scales of the lead guitar, “So take my hand / don’t let me surrender / ‘cause maybe someday / in time / things will go my way.” The song carries as much angst as the next post-pubescent-but-not-yet-quite-into-adulthood song but Band’s low and jagged ranting is enough to make people think, “Hey yeah, this is my song.”

As with the first album, THE CALLING comments on the plight of the homeless in the States. One by One (track 1) however is less jaded than We're Forgiven (2001). One by One is more hopeful, preachy even, about how one person can make a difference in the world. This train of thought is echoed in the songs Believing (track 5) and Our Lives (track 2).

Apparently, such heartbreaking sentimental songs (like Wherever You Will Go, Could It Be Any Harder and Stigmatized ) are not to be included in II. The love songs in the new album in fact, bear whimsical themes and have feel-good touches as that of Chasing the Sun (track 4) and Dreaming in Red (track 10). Anything (track 6) is a love song that bests describes stalker obsession.

Darker songs like Your Hope, Somebody Out There (track 8) and If Only (track 7) are commendable less for their messages but more for their tempi. These songs go the way of Freshmen (Verve Pipe), Heaven (Live) and Let Her Cry (Hootie and the Blowfish). In extreme transmutation however, THE CALLING’S Surrender pretty much has the sentimentality of Backstreet Boy’s The Call.

II is for the aficionados of pop rock – the likes of Creed, Matchbox Twenty and Lifehouse. It is of course not as bone-jarring as Korn or Kid Rock but definitely a million times better than The Cardigans and Richard Ashcroft. At the very least, THE CALLING”S album can pull a body into a sway or into an air drumming session. But heck, it’s good enough to give grandma an orgasm or two.

-Charisse Mae T. Ampo

A short profile

He walks out of glass doors, combing the crowded atrium for his friends, his left hand clutching the strap of his Lego knapsack, his other hand scratching the back of his head. Every time he comes from class, he gives an impression of someone perpetually in awe, this unmistakable look of wonder and naïveté on his face. Yes, he looks like someone you immediately want to punch in the face. In is rubber sneakers, he walks as if he’s impersonating a penguin, or a giddy dodo bird resurrected from extinction, flashing his teeth at the people he passes by. But when he’s down, as what I have been told, he’ll maintain a stiff face for the rest of the day, the confident spoken English he’s known for will be gone—when in a bad mood, he tends to go monosyllabic.

“Are you okay,” asks a friend.

“Yeah,” he replies, failing to fake a smile.

“Why the face?”

“Hungry.”

“Want to eat at the canteen?”

“No.”

“I thought you were hungry.”

“Must go home.”

“Are you ill?”

“Just tired.”

Everyone who knows him believes he’s a smart person, these acquaintances conceding that his intellect is a cut above theirs. Two years ago when I first met him, I also thought that I was in the presence of someone smart. But that sort of dwindled when I saw him speak at the launching of the college literary journal; he introduced a latest addition to the Kombuyahan genus, a small troupe of guitarists that call themselves kwerdas. As it was the launching of a literary journal, I didn’t particularly expect them to play hair-raising pieces such as “More Than Words.” To make things more interesting…

“I believe that I have the fire in me,” the young string instrumentalist announced in a room full of hungry people.

“Sir Joey and I talked about the fire. And I believe in the fire.”

Someone in the audience cringed in his seat. It wasn’t me.

One probably perplexing thing about him: most of his friends are girls. Not just chair-hogging know-it-alls in the library, but pretty, terrific-smelling girls that a fratman would fantasize about. Some might call him lucky: he doesn’t even have to buy them lunch or treat them to a scary movie at SM. They flock around him, a congregation of attractive and preppy teenagers ready to bend over his will. Okay, maybe that was an awful hyperbole. Girls just like being around him, hang out with him, these Communication Arts sophomores popular for their nymphet allure in the campus. Their dashing little Humbert Humbert: him and his big puff of curly hair.

“Do these girls find him attractive?” I ask one of his female friends.

“Nah,” she answers, pouting her lips. “They just like to hang out. He has a good personality and girls like that in a guy.”

“But has he ever made a move on any of his girl friends?”

She chuckles. “Maybe. He used to make porma with one of them. And she didn’t like it.”

“He creeps her out?” I added.

“It’s just that they have issues, okay. They don’t talk with each other anymore.”

One of his friends once confessed that he is a troubled person. He likes staying in the dorm because home doesn’t seem to feel like one anymore. He kills time after classes, avoiding the trip back to his house. He busies himself with kwerdas, spends time with his loyal friends at the dried-up water fountain, talking about the profound and nonsense, whining about college while throwing stones at stray dogs. He strums his guitar for anyone that’s willing to listen, plays a thrilling game of chess with a relative stranger.

For a college guy, he is a quite a creep. He makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand whenever he grins at me on the path walk and say, “Greetings.”

When I see him, the first thing that comes to my find is fruitcake; he simply reminds me of one. Tart and spongy. Someone once referred to him as Sponge Bob, the famous Nickelodeon character. I frowned upon hearing this and later marveled at the appropriateness of the term. And then I discovered he actually liked being associated with a cartoon sponge. Now whenever we stumble into each other, I wait for him to transmogrify into a giant yellow sponge who sounded like he recently OD’d on Prozac.

The day I approached him, he wore a white Rebisco Cream Sandwich t-shirt that was too large for him, his thick, chunky hair protected by a khaki fisherman’s hat, an acoustic guitar strapped to his back.

“Do you still have class?”

He turned around and I notice a black pen clipped to his shirt’s collar. “Nope. Anything I can do?”

I was about to ask my first question when I got distracted by a yellowing pimple on his jaw.

What I admire about him is that no matter what happens, he ends up endearing. On Deviance Day a year ago, he showed up looking like Dhobie, wearing a brown towel ripped to shreds, his skin smeared with charcoal. No one laughed at him; he did look ridiculous but he held it with pride. He even grabbed the microphone that evening and declared to everyone that he felt so deviant he should win the title. He didn’t. But a girl who wore nothing but a cardboard box did.

What drove him to do it, to act so fearless in front of everyone you’d actually believe in him? No wonder his friends admire him. He could wear a boy scout t-shirt to school and not care. He could look like a hobo, sound like an alien invader from another dimension. He could act like a total freak and he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass. In fact, he would gladly do that classic Sponge Bob impression, coax the show’s theme from his reliable guitar and walk away contented. So what’s the big secret? Between you and me, I think it’s “the fire.”

John Bengan

FIFTEEN MINUTES WITH THE GUY-I-DON'T-KNOW-HIS-NAME

(felt like forever!)

By Shiella A. Ildefonso

01-61271

Early Monday morning, I found myself sitting alone by the fountain at the Atrium. There were only more or less fifteen students who stayed at the fountain's area. From where I sat, fronting the entrance door to the Admin building, there were about ten students at my right and the rest were somewhere facing the IT office and to the stairs going to the library. The students in my right were looking at me, I could feel the eyes looking at me while I was sitting there as if I was lost or I was new in the place or something. Then I heard one asked the other, “upperclass na siya?”, and one guy answered him, “dili uy, diba ning-dagan man na siya ug councilor?”, and inside my head I want to answer “ngano mura ko ug first year?”. But I continued opening my black folder, looking whether my papers to be passed for my thesis were there. It was so funny when I had to pretend that as if I was not listening to their conversation, since after checking my folder, there was nothing else to do but to eavesdrop(and I then realized, I had to, for this article.) and besides, I was still gathering my strength to face my adviser.

“Hay, kapoya aning dug-on ko uy!” a girl said while adjusting her blue jogging pants as she stood in front of one of the guys. She was the only female in the group.

“Kapoy gyud na noh, bug-at siguro na imong ginasuk-suk sa imong panty?” a tall musculed-gay with a mustache, wearing his PE uniform, and by saying that he looked at me as I looked at him, shocked with his reaction.

“Gyud!” the girl said while holding the sides of her jogging pants like of a skirt.

And everybody laughed. I assumed they were Computer Science students. I knew one of them, Gian, who was a member of the Bayla Vinta. And they looked like they were from their PE class, since all of them were wearing their PE uniforms and were most probably they were resting by the fountain.

They were talking and talking and laughing of things the muscled-gay was talking. I couldn't remember his jokes but for sure all of them were green jokes. He was talking so fast like he was running after something. He was eating his words like supposedly saying "Asa mo nag-adto?", he would say " Asmo'g-to?" (Like, ha?) And he had many expressions almost every after sentence, like "haller", "galore”, “char lang!”. He also added word to the expression “charmus” with “charmus-ginamus-iring-gigakus!”. And his laughter was totally torturing me to death. His voice was so harsh that he tried to sound like of a sweet lady, like when he said “Ay, 'Day”. He sounded terrible. Not mentioning his mustache.

"Hoy! Naa na mo? Naka-himo na mo?" guy in red shirt and black shorts and rubber slippers interuppted while holding his backpack unto his chest.

"Wala pa intawon oi!" the girl in jogging pants said to her blocmates as they were looking at her with smiling faces.

"Bitaw oi, mabuang na ko ani! Hay! Kapoy na kaayo! Daghan kaayo ug assignment bah! Naglibog na ko kung unsa ang unahon! Mabuang na ko ani! Naka-study na mo?" the muscled-gay with a mustache spontaneously ranted as he stood in front of one guy who was wearing white shirt and maroon jogging pants. Only then I noticed that there was another guy who was lying on the pebble-cemented mouth of the fountain pool, where he was facing to the oblation. He was wearing yellow shirt and maong pants. He used some of his blocmates bag as his pillow and said, "Ah, kaya lagi na. Na-kaya gani sa atong mga upperclass."

And they were silent. I wondered why. Although my head bowed as I was as if texting someone, I felt that they were looking at me. Then, feeling superior, I looked at them, and found that they were indeed looking at me. Then I hurriedly grabbed my bag and my black folder and went inside the building. Pretending that it was as if it was time to go in the building.

Upon entering by the guard's table, I heard one commented, "Bitaw". I might not had see who said it but the voice was familiar. I know it was that muscled-gay with a mustache, I somehow got used with his voice, even for that fifteen-mintue stay at the fountain area. His voice was ringing in my ears like the way my crush called my name. But this time, he was not my crush and I don't even know his name.

by Sahara Alia Jauhali Silongan

September 20, 2004

Behind every great love is a great story.

The romantics say it is a classic tale of love found, lost and regained (1) that would bring tears to the eyes of those who believe how true love can do miracles. The cynics, on the other hand, consider the film a typical over-sentimental love story that would bore those who are tired of overused plots.

Based from the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks, Director Nick Cassavettes brings us The Notebook, a poignant story that will surely captivate the hearts of those who came to love Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember.

The film basically focuses on two stories – one is that of an eighty-year-old man named Duke and this old woman to whom he reads the other story from his notebook. Cassavettes captures the whole film, dividing it into two parts by occasionally shifting from the frame of the story to the story within the frame.

The story opens with an old woman (Gena Rowlands) overlooking a beautiful river from a window. (Her name is not mentioned until the middle of the story.) Accompanied by a middle-aged nurse, the scene tells us that the she might be in a hospital or something like a health center. Then enters Duke (James Garner) with his notebook and reading glasses. He sits next to the old woman as the nurse leaves them in the room. He flips open the notebook and reads her a story And so begins the tragic yet triumphant story of real love and its miracles.

The scene brings us back to 1940s Seabrook, North Carolina, sometime before the War, where nineteen-year-old Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling), falls deeply in love with the seventeen-year-old Allie Hamilton, (Rachel MacAdams) who at that time spends a summer in her father’s estate. He reads poetry with his father while she, a debutante, loves painting and takes piano lessons. They go out on a date, fall madly in love with each other and become inseparable. But Allie’s mother (Joan Allen ) doesn’t approve of the relationship, calling Noah a trash because he doesn’t belong to the high-class society like Allie does. Allie fights for Noah but the situation has created a tension between them that soon led to misunderstandings that causes their breakup before the summer ends. Allie goes back to her hometown without having the chance to say goodbye to Noah. Meanwhile, Noah is devastated to find out that Allie is gone. He writes her 365 letters a year but doesn’t receive a reply. Allie’s mother happens to be keeping her daughter’s letters that for months and months, Allie cries herself to sleep thinking that Noah has forgotten all about her.

After seven years, Noah who is still fresh from the War reunites with Allie who is now a socialite engaged to a lawyer named Lon Hammond, Jr. Allie is busy preparing for her wedding when she sees the ad on the paper featuring Noah’s picture with the newly reconstructed 18th century Plantation house as he once showed her. The picture brings back old memories and confused emotions to Allie that she soon finds herself back in Seabrook, standing before the house, seeing Noah once again. Noah was surprised to see her. Allie stays for two days while she and Noah do some catching up for the lost seven years. Noah discovers that she’s engaged while Allie learns that he wrote her everyday for a year. Seeing each other again rekindles old flames and brings back old feelings and the two fall in love again.

From time to time, the scene shifts back to Duke and to the old woman, now revealed as the future Allie suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. This leaves the viewers (those who haven’t read the book) to ponder on whether Duke is the older Noah or Lon. Some say it is an easy guess while others say it isn’t. I have read the novel so I was in for no surprises.

Just as everything becomes clear between the two, Allie’s mother comes into the picture, reminding her daughter of her betrothal to Lon. She then hands Allie’s letters from Noah and explains her reasons for keeping them. Allie later learns from her mother that Lon is on his way to Seabrook to check on her. This creates a conflict between Allie and Noah as she decides to leave him and go back to Lon though she confesses to Noah that she still loves him.

“The story ends,” says Duke who then closes his notebook. Allie demands to know who the young Allie ends up with but Duke wouldn’t tell her. Until miraculously, Allie remembers. This part reveals that Duke happens to be the old Noah. Once again, the old couple reunite, dancing to an old song Noah plays with his small cassette. After a minute or so, her Alzheimer’s attacks that she soon forgets her husband and starts to push Noah away. This hurts Noah more than ever. (I have to give James Garner a credit for his portrayal in this picture.)

Although The Notebook is based from Nicholas Sparks’ novel, New Line Cinema presents a film that is to some extent unfaithful to the book but all the same heartwarming and wonderful. Had it been faithful to the original storyline, the movie, in my opinion, will not be able to achieve the success that the novel has. What is good about the book is that it is simple in form yet powerful. The simplicity of the plot, I believe, will not fit in a moving picture that by adding more romantic scenes and conflict that are merely implied in the book, film writers Jeremy Leven and Jan Sardi put more spice to the story as well as chemistry, if not tension, between the characters. By doing so, they were able to produce a more typical storyline, joining the lineup of those that are now considered as clichés. The Noah-Allie-Lon triangle reminds me of the final season of Dawson's Creek as it plays on who’s-going-to-end-up-with-who scenario. Had it not been for the actors’ brilliant performances and also the breathtaking scenes captured in the film – an ancestral white house overlooking the river, swans that floated close together in a clear lake, surrounding a pair of lovers in a canoe -- I must say that the movie will not be as good as it has turned out to be.

When I first learned that Ryan Gosling and Rachel MacAdams were going to star as Noah and Allie in the film version of the novel, I was, in a way, disappointed. Although I haven’t had any actors in mind that I think would best portray the characters, I just thought that Gosling and MacAdams would not pass Nicholas Sparks’ description of Noah and Allie in his book. Well, at least not physically. Both actors were too young to play the roles that they would best fit in a teen flick like for instance, Mean Girls, which starred MacAdams as the meanest of the mean girls. But after seeing the two performed, I had no complaints.

Ryan Gosling carried himself well as both teenage and twenty-something Noah Calhoun. Meanwhile, Rachel MacAdams proves that she could do more than playing Miss Popularity opposite Lindsay Lohan (Mean Girls) or a mean cheerleader turned into a man (Hot Chick). A perfect example of a modern day woman, MacAdams has successfully transformed herself into a 1940s socialite and this time she has a paintbrush in hand instead of a pom-pom. I must say that Gosling’s serious look about him captures an almost, if not perfect, portrayal of Noah that he captivated the viewers in the same way that MacAdams did with her sweet and high-spirited portrayal of Allie Hamilton (though the name is actually Allie Nelson in the novel).

The two young actors, however, could not compare with the performances by Academy Award nominees James Garner and Gena Rowlands. While Gosling and MacAdams make the audience fall in love with their depiction of a young romance, Garner and Rowlands, on the other hand, are responsible for the tear jerking scenes in the film. I was personally touched when Duke or the old Noah cried while Allie wailed as she suffered from Alzheimer’s attacks. Garner and Rowlands evoked such a painful scene that had me sobbing until the end of the film.

Moreover, performance by Joan Allen as the strict and sophisticated mother was notable. David Thornton (Allie’s father) and Sam Shephard (Noah’s father), however, only had a few takes in the film. Some critics say, though, that these three actors deserve more challenging roles considering the good reputation they have as actors.

As typical as the storyline turned out to be, I have to admit that I enjoyed the script – again, thanks to the actors who brought every line to life through their inspiring performance. A self-confessed sucker for romance that I am, I have to say that The Notebook is the only film that captivated me in such a way that it made me laugh and sigh and cry hard. I don’t usually cry in a movie and the last time I did was when I watched The Land Before Time when I was eight. And for the first time in my career as a movie addict, I fell in love with the characters themselves and not with the actors who played them. It really doesn’t matter to me if some critics consider the film too sappy or the love story too good to be true. One thing’s for certain, Nick Cassavettes’ The Notebook has become an addition to my list of all-time-favorite films alongside Randal Kleiser’s Grease and Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet.

(1) from a book review by Christian Science Monitor

There is one poignant scene near the end of Sylvia. Daniel Craig, whose face is washed with despair, bends over a morgue table and kisses Gwyneth Paltrow’s ashen forehead. This scene coalesces with another where Hughes finds the Ariel manuscript inside Plath’s London apartment. But nothing prepared this reviewer for a final love scene: Sylvia and Ted writhing in naked passion on the sofa. After which he will tell her, as she lies on his bare chest, that his mistress is pregnant, that he can’t go back to her again. She stares across the dimly lit room before resting her head back on his chest, realizing that nothing more will be rekindled. One cannot help but cringe, Hollywood didacticism in action. A curious guess from writer John Brownlow, who apparently yearned for a less grim ending, a quiet resolution.

Sylvia, the 2003 Focus Pictures production, follows the life of American poet Sylvia Plath who famously ended her life in the cold February morning of 1963 — the female wordsmith who made not only a most terrifying statement but also cemented herself into literary myth when she stuck her head inside an oven. The movie begins in Cambridge, where Plath is a student under a Fulbright scholarship. She later meets the young Ted Hughes in a party, intrepidly approaching him to praise his poem, and then biting his cheek after “kissing him quite insane.” Destined for a passionate and turbulent partnership, the two marries and travels back to Massachusetts where Plath grew up. Ted teaches at the University of Massachusetts while Sylvia at her alma mater, Smith College. Then the couple moves back to England, in a countryside cottage, and soon after, their children, Frieda and Nicholas, are born. The film then zeroes in on Sylvia suspecting Ted’s infidelity, which is proven true and leads to their separation, and later on, to Plath’s death.

In 1953, the young Sylvia Plath suffered a nervous breakdown that made way to her first suicide attempt, downing a handful of pills and shutting herself in her mother's basement. This event inspired a ghastly, vividly electrifying scene in her novel The Bell Jar, the strongly autobiographical book she wrote through the latter years of her marriage with Ted Hughes. Sylvia Plath’s material crosses over the different forms she operated in. So in her poem “Lady Lazarus,” this early brush on death’s surface came out as: “…I meant/To last it out and not come back at all./I rocked shut//As a seashell./They had to call and call/And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.”

Blythe Danner, playing Aurelia Plath, shares this episode to the Ted Hughes character, a part of the film that attempts to presage the fatal descend of Paltow’s Plath. But Sylvia’s relationship with her mother, Aurelia, was yet another immense universe that governed the poet’s short life, one that largely influenced Sylvia the mother and wife, most significantly Sylvia the poet. The movie shied away from this premise, as if fearing a black hole. The best Christine Jeffs’ film could offer is this small, narrative tool of an exchange between Aurelia and Ted.

Despite its apparent limitations, Sylvia was wonderfully shot, the scenes skillfully selected, a production of handsome results. John Toon invokes all four seasons of Sylvia Plath’s spirit: sunny college, drizzly beachside, eternal autumn, and the wintry spiral to suicide. Frieda Hughes publicly condemned the film and prohibited access to her parents’ works. Still the filmmakers found a way to locate many of Plath’s images on screen: crashing waves; house made of cobblestones; snowy roads; mirrors; the Yew tree outside her London flat; the bald, leering moon; a garden where irretrievable smiles fell; walls where babies’ shrieks melted; the fluorescent light “wincing on and off like a terrible migraine.” Excerpts of Sylvia’s poetry are tossed in, noticeably those that fumed about her suicide attempts. But somehow the message, rather tersely, still comes across: women poets in Plath’s era had a harder time. On the launching of her book of poems, The Colossus, Plath encounters a critic who doesn’t even know who she was, let alone review her book when an e.e. cummings collection is coming out. A scene where Paltrow reads the last parts of “Daddy” is particularly striking, but leaves you wanting for more.

The cast offered inspired, oftentimes moving performances, especially from Paltrow and Craig. Daniel Craig’s portrayal is vibrant as it is enigmatic. He renders a passionate poet, intense lover, a husband bewildered by his wife’s fascination with death, perhaps the Ted Hughes many Plath followers crucified for his “brute, brute heart.” After watching the film, one senses the haunting presence of Hughes, brought back to life by Craig, this remarkable persona Plath deemed as her father’s double, “the vampire” who said he was him. Fearlessly rising above her character’s reputation, Gwyneth Paltow shows a controlled and stylish impression of Plath, when she was in love, happy, and broken down by a destructive neurosis. Watch her smolder in a superbly executed dinner party.

The film, vividly photographed as it is, only offers a short glance of Sylvia and Ted’s life. For the Plath and Hughes readers, it could be disappointing; so much happened in their life together that this hundred-minutes picture didn’t capture. Roger Ebert argued that Sylvia’s “life and work were so entwined,” and so it wasn’t a trouble for him that the movie focused on Plath’s “sad, interior sort of madness.” I agree that Plath’s work gallantly mirrored many events in her life, especially the latter and most harrowing parts. But the effect this film leaves is still not quite fulfilling, insights considerably suffering in spite of biographical facts. More so, a fascinating creature such as Sylvia Plath is difficult to depict, above all on celluloid, without submitting to the stereotypes, the myth and assumptions about her life through years of biographical studies, cult followings and literary scholarship.

Disregarding Paltrow’s performance, what we have is only a thin layer of Sylvia’s persona, apart from the many guises revealed in the poet’s Unabridged Journals. In this film, we are left with a woman wounded by her husband’s betrayal, a man who is baffled by his wife’s temperament (“I know I couldn’t live with her anymore.”), and a palpably incomplete study of a relationship that, for sure, was more than just a domestic catastrophe. Although even for a brief moment, the informed viewer can bask in the shapes, textures, colors, and sensations that surrounded Ted and Sylvia. “Life was too small to contain her,” or so the production teaser says. Pointedly with the scorn of Plath’s daughter, this movie too was.